IT'S around 7.30pm when three young indigenous boys turn up at the Tennant Creek home of a white woman, asking her if she can give them a lift home.

The problem is, they don't have homes. Not like most of us would know them.

The boys have just been fed dinner next door in the home of another white woman, who does her bit to help the boys, who wander the streets all day and night.

One of the boys, a 14-year-old named "J", will soon serve as chief Crown witness in the trial of a man who allegedly sexually assaulted him over a period of months.

Wandering boys and girls are the target of white and black predators in this town, 500km north of Alice Springs.

J's best mate is "L", aged 10. And there's "N", also 10.

Asked where his parents are, L says: "Out bush."

Asked why they didn't take him, he says: "Not enough room in the car."

So they left you here in town to wander around? He shrugs.

First we take L to the south side of town. He wants to stay with a white man, aged in his 50s, who sometimes lets L camp at his place.

My friend, the white woman, has been asking around town about this white man, but has been unable to unearth anything negative.

She asks L if he understands about being touched inappropriately. L responds: "He's a good bloke. He doesn't even like women."

L climbs a fence but the man is not home.

Source: Northern Territory News

Next we drive up to the Eldorado Motel, on the north side of town. The Eldorado currently leases 30 rooms – or 29, after someone crashed his car into one – to local Aborigines.

The situation emerged after the housing units they occupied were sold off, forcing them to vacate. It looks like an arrangement to house asylum—seekers, except these are our First People.

J's family occupy one of the motel rooms, paying $270 a week for their one—bedroom unit, which has a toilet, a shower and a hand basin for running water. There are no cooking facilities.

On this night, J's mother says L can crash for the night. There will 10 or 11 sleeping in the single room.

Then it's off to Mulga Camp, a town camp on the north—east of town, to drop off N.

You can sense N sizing up the situation as we approach. There is a group of women, sitting around in a big circle, playing cards. The game's been going all day.

N gets out of the car, hesitates, and walks through the gate to his home, a place with walls and a roof and little else. Fortunately he's had dinner and won't go hungry tonight.

Whether the other kids hanging around have been fed will depend on whether the women have won, or lost, their CentreLink money on the gambling blanket.

The smallest children in Tennant Creek are tragically attuned to the welfare cycle, knowing what days the money lands, so that they might scrounge a feed; knowing when to disappear when the adults start drinking.

There are possibly hundreds of Aboriginal kids in this town who live off their wits, or rely on the kindness of others, as people try to provide what their parents won't give them.

Source: Northern Territory News

It's not enough.

The next morning, J and L are wandering Tennant Creek together. There's no one to make them go to school, or even to encourage them. The school has a free lunch program, but that's not enough to lure J and L.

The boys reckon there's about 50 petrol or solvent sniffers in town at the moment, carrying on their activities in the darkness of the baseball ground.

The previous night, before dropping the boys, we took a look, but the boys said: “Hear that?” There was a series of low warning whistles as the sniffers scattered somewhere off in the darkness.

Tennant Creek was allocated $36.5m in 2008 under the Strategic Indigenous Housing Infrastructure Project to "normalise" the town camps into modern suburbs.

They built no new homes but refurbished some, and installed kerbing and lights. The place looked like it did 10 years ago.

Except now it's even worse.

Nowhere in Australia is the welfare culture so clearly visible than on this public town on a major national highway. And nowhere are the children so invisible.

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